When we think of what “being sanctified” looks like, this might not be the first thing that comes to mind. If we tried to describe “holiness”, this might not make the top of our holiness “to do” list.

Abstain from sexual immorality (1Thess. 4:3-4)? Check, that makes sense. Love one another (1Thess. 4:9)? Yup, I can see how that makes the list. But “live quietly”? Hmm . . .

. . . aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

(1Thessalonians 4:11-12 ESV)

Live quietly . . . mind your own affairs . . . work with your hands . . . How’s that for a concise shortlist of commands to obey so that we would walk properly before outsiders?

I’m guessing that it was the culture around them and the habits some of them had picked up from that culture which prompted Paul to pen these commands. I might infer that stirring things up in the public square was a thing — and viewed as a normal thing — for many in Thessalonica. So was sticking one’s nose in the affairs of other. As was idleness, to the point of depending on others for what they should have provided for themselves. While the world around them — the world they had been redeemed from — might value these things, for those who were called to walk in a new way, such things were unbecoming those called to holiness.

Instead, in order to walk properly before outsiders, they were to buck cultural norms and instead live quietly. To “make it their ambition to have, in a sense, no ambition” (Philips). To hold one’s peace. To not meddle. To not be busybodies. Rather, their focus was to be on their own stuff, tending to their own affairs. Working with their own hands to meet their own needs.

Sounds pretty ordinary, huh? Kind of mundane? Not the stuff that you’d necessarily immediately connect to being an ambassador of a kingdom not of this world? Yeah, maybe . . . if that’s all that they were doing.

But we know that wasn’t the case. This band of believers had “turned from idols to serve the living and true God” (1Thess. 1:9) and were stirring up the world around them as word of their faith in God had “gone forth everywhere” (1Thess. 1:8). They had “received the word of God” and were living like it really was “the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (2:13).

They were making waves; they were disturbing the status quo. And part of how they were doing that was by not diluting their message with noise about things that didn’t matter in light of eternity. By not meddling in affairs which, at the end of the day, weren’t worth meddling in. Instead, Paul encouraged them, as he encouraged others in other places, to “lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1Tim. 2:2), to “if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18).

Living quietly. Minding my own business. Keeping busy with what God has called me to keep busy with. Mindful to avoid creating barriers to the gospel, barriers erected by running with the crowd’s craziness and going with the culture’s flow. That’s walking properly. That’s holiness (at least in part). That’s sanctification.

Live quietly.

By His grace. For His glory.